06_Ps130Full

06_Psalm 130

0:00:00.0 Speaker 2: If you like having Bible study in your pocket, and you have an iPhone or an IPad, why not leave a review? Search Bible Study Evangelista in iTunes and tell everyone how you're loving and lifting all you've been given. Here's Sonja.

0:00:14.4 Sonja Corbitt: Let's get social. Connect with me at Bible study Evangelista on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and now you can also find me on the number one Catholic app for iPhone and Android, Laudate. Let's connect. And now, let's get some Bible study in your pocket.

[music]

0:00:42.5 SC: Psalm 130, depending on your translation, it could also be , the sixth Penitential Psalm in our seven Penitential series, I'm Sonja Corbitt, the Bible study Evangelista, welcoming you to the Bible study Evangelista show, where we love and lift all we've been given. And today, I think we're going to learn how to lift the souls in Purgatory, because this particular Psalm is understood by the church to be the official prayer for the souls in purgatory, so we're gonna talk about purgatory today, but first, let's look at the notation for this Psalm.

0:01:20.9 SC: It's believed to probably have been written by David, it's called A , A-S-C-E-N-T-S. So ascending to the temple on pilgrimage. So this would have been a Psalm that the Jewish people would have recited with one another together in community as they walked the hill up to Jerusalem. And if you've ever been to the Holy Land, and I hope that you will think about a pilgrimage to the Holy Land with me, because it is truly, I believe, I really do think that this should be something that the church almost requires, you should really think about it that seriously, because it is so central to our faith, this idea of pilgrimage, and so as they made their way up in elevation to Jerusalem... And if you've been there, you know how that looks and what it feels like you're ascending, and so that's why it's called A Song of ascents, even though, say for Jesus, he would have been descending to the south, from Galilee, he would have been traveling south, and yet he would have ascended to the temple by walking up the hill on which Jerusalem sits.

0:02:35.0 SC: It's actually part of seven Hills, really, some would say even 10, but I digress. The point is this Psalm was a Psalms that, and remember that Psalm means a song, it was a Psalm that they would have recited in community as they ascended the hill to Jerusalem, to the temple, and it's also called one of the great Psalms, which is short for , and in the Mishnah, it ties these ascents Psalms to Jerusalem for feasts that were... This was a Psalm as I said, that they would recite in procession as they ascended for feasts, for feast days, so pilgrimage days or feast days, so we understand that because in a sense, Lent for us is a type of pilgrimage, a type of purgatory, a type of desert. And so that's what we're gonna talk about today.

03/27/21 Page 1 of 12 06_Ps130Full

0:03:31.3 SC: But the structure of the Psalm, it's separated into four parts, it's only eight stanzas actually. And the first part, the first two verses are basically, hear me Lord. The next two are, they give reasons because you are a God who forgives, that's the first reason, the second reason is in the next two stanzas, five and six, because I trust in you, and the third reason is because He will save, that's in stanzas seven and eight. So the beginning says in Verses 1 and 2, "Out of the depths I cry to thee, O Lord, Lord, hear my voice. Let thy ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications."

0:04:09.3 SC: And so we know that God as pure spirit doesn't actually have ears, so this is a metaphor, it's called anthropomorphism, and so it attributes physical properties to God who is actually pure spirit, and that's really a... It's a way for us creatures to sort of understand God, and we apply then human characteristics to God who really doesn't actually have those, and so he says, "Let thy ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications." So he is asking God to hear his prayer and He says, out of the depths.

0:04:45.6 SC: And so that could be the depths of say death, or it could be sin, Jonah actually used that word. He was in the depths of the belly of the whale, and so it could be a type of death, we don't really know. And the next couple of verses, "If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared." And so when it says, mark iniquities, that means to preserve a record or to keep. So we need to look at this. Does God keep a record? Well, he does in so far as we don't confess our sin, as long as it is not confessed, there is a record kept, and in a sense, there will always be a record kept because we have that particular judgment at our death, which we'll talk about in just a moment.

0:05:39.9 SC: But once the sin is forgiven, the Bible talks about how God casts our sin as far as the east is from the west, and when we go to confession and we confess our sin, it is absolved, which means it is gone. And so when God forgives our sin, it is not remembered, so he doesn't keep score. And so the question is for you, do you keep score? Do you keep score in your relationships with other people, and if so, then you might ask yourself, Have I really forgiven, because if you have truly forgiven someone of their sin, you don't remember it anymore.

0:06:15.5 SC: And it may come to mind, it's not that you don't remember it rationally in your head, of course, you have maybe the memory of it, but you don't have the sting and you don't have the anger and the bitterness. You don't hold it against the other person. So that's actually a good question, do you keep score? And it says that, "If you Lord kept score, who could stand?" And so the implication is absolutely no one could. If God kept score after he had forgiven us of our sin, if he showed us, and in fact, this is part of the essence of purgatory right now, because we exist in a body...

0:06:55.0 SC: We don't have an awareness of all of our faults and sins, whether they're mortal sins or venial sins, which I'll get to in a moment, but because we don't have that raw awareness, it is easy for us to pretend we don't have them, and so that's what will make purgatory and the particular judgment so difficult because the filter of the body will have been completely removed and we will stand before God, just totally naked, spiritually, and bare, and there won't be the filter of the body to help us pretend that we don't have sin or that we haven't sinned in our lives, which I'll get to in more depth in just a moment.

0:07:38.3 SC: But it says in verse 4, "There is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared," and so forgiveness there, the root of that is propitiation, which means an atonement, a satisfaction.

03/27/21 Page 2 of 12 06_Ps130Full

With God there is an atonement, there is satisfaction, which was made through Christ on the cross and by His death and His resurrection, so the propitiation has been completely met, at least in an eternal way, which we'll look at again, as I said in a moment, but the reason it says, is so God can be feared. And what does that mean? That means that God is so powerful, his power is so matchless that he can extend forgiveness to his creatures without losing any of His majesty and His power and His authority.

0:08:28.7 SC: And so if you think of yourself, think of your... Think of parents, when you extend forgiveness to a child, you don't lose anything of who you are, instead you're offering mercy to a child and you understand that they are in development and they are learning, and so it is a sign of your power and your authority over them, that you're able to forgive them and lift them up out of that sin or that fault or that offense that they may have committed against you, knowing that they are young, and so for us, God looks at us as His children, and so we are young and weak because of our physical limitations and all kinds of other things, and our woundedness, and so God can extend his forgiveness and that propitiation or that satisfaction for sin, and in so doing, it causes us to have a deep respect for him, that he would condescend to offer us forgiveness when we so clearly do not deserve it, and so the fear here, it's not a fear as in terror, but in respect.

0:09:47.2 SC: Verse 5, "I wait for the Lord, my soul waits. So the psalmist is submissive to God's timing. Boy, is that a tough discipline, and I have really struggled with that this Lent specifically because I do believe that something major is coming for our world and our church, and I expected that it would only be a few weeks, and here we are already into a few months. And so this waiting is, it's so difficult and it's irritating, and it's annoying to wait, right? But the psalmist here understands that God's timing is always perfect, and so he's submissive to that timing, and it says, "In his word, I hope."

0:10:27.3 SC: That word then he's waiting for a word from God. He's really here, the word here means the law. So he's waiting on God, His promise and a new word from the scriptures possibly, but also he's waiting on action on a promise that is in God's word or in his law. And so the principal is that God will always give us a new word while we wait. He will give us something that lifts us up and sustains us through the Scriptures while we wait on his timing for his promises and his action.

0:11:03.2 SC: So my soul waits for the Lord, more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. That's repeated twice. And so it gives... It's probably a choral repetition, but it gives emphasis to the fact that the psalmist is waiting on God's timing and His word, and that can be either Levitical as in ceremonial, this Watchman, or it could be military, it could be a literal Watchman in a military kind of way, but a watchman always waits for the morning with certainty, he knows it's gonna come, and so no matter how long the night feels, or how long and dark it seems, the watchman knows that the morning and the dawn will come.

[music]

0:11:52.6 Speaker 3: You're listening to the Bible Study Evangelista Show, bible study spinach that tastes like cake.

0:12:00.3 S2: Sonja created the LOVE the word Bible study method just for you, based on Mary's personal practice and formulated for your personality and temperament, get your LOVE the word meditations every Monday morning by signing up at biblestudyevangelista.com. Now, here's Sonja.

03/27/21 Page 3 of 12 06_Ps130Full

[music]

0:12:37.0 SC: Verse 6 of Psalm 130 talks about a watchman, and I like to point out when we see that word watch, as I mentioned in the previous segment, this could be either a Levitical Watchman or a military Watchman, but either way, the principle is the same. They are looking for the morning. But the word watch in the scriptures is very closely related to the word almond, and that's interesting because in the , the almond branch was used to differentiate the tribe of Aaron from among the other tribes as the tribe from which the high priesthood would come.

0:13:17.4 SC: And the almond branch was also part of the decoration of the menorah in the Old Testament tabernacle, and later on in the New Testament, we see that we should obey our bishops because they keep watch over our souls. And those words, watch and almond are actually... They go together, you see that the context in the New Testament is Bishop and watching, because they watch over our souls, they are Watchmen or they're supposed to be... I mean, I know we could argue that point, right, because Bishops and Priests are simply men, and so they have faults and sins just like we do, and so they fail just like we do, but they still retain this position of authority in the church and in the Old Testament, they had the authority of Judaism.

0:14:09.3 SC: And so Watchmen then should always... When we see that word watch, we should always be thinking of the priesthood, because that's a metaphor or a symbol for the priesthood, and so the menorah in the Old Testament tabernacle was symbolic of the Old Testament priesthood, the institutional priesthood, and we see that repeated in the temple in heaven, in the Book of Revelation, in chapters one and two... I think it's actually just chapter 1, but Jesus is standing in the center of seven lamp stands, and that's the priesthood throughout the entire history of salvation from beginning to end.

0:14:48.0 SC: And so he stands in the center because he is the true and last high priest, and it is through him that the authority and the word comes to the priesthood, it is the light in the church, it was the light in the Old Testament tabernacle, it was the light for the people, because the priesthood taught the people the word of God through the law, and we see the same symbolism used in the temple in heaven in the Book of Revelation, Jesus is the light of the world, it is his high priesthood, through which He instructs and he gives light to the whole earth and the church throughout salvation history.

0:15:29.8 SC: So when we see that word Watchmen, we should be thinking of the priesthood, so more than Watchmen for the morning, and it's repeated twice as a choral repetition to emphasize the fact that the psalmist is waiting on God the way a watchman waits for the morning, and the watchmen, we can actually think in our minds of this priesthood, the priesthood waits on God, and of course, we are a kind of lay priesthood, each of us offers our own sacrifices, the sacrifices of our lives, which we'll talk about in more depth here in a moment, when we talk about purgatory, but in a sense, we are all a type of priest, a lay priest, in which we offer the sacrifices of our own lives so we could include ourselves in this watching sort of imagery.

0:16:20.0 SC: And so we wait on the Lord, and he says, "I wait for the Lord, my soul waits and in His Word, I hope." And so for us, for you who are waiting on God for something, perhaps you've prayed for quite a long time about a particular situation, as you wait on God, you need to be looking to His word, because it's His Word that will help you watch, it's His Word that will help you wait in

03/27/21 Page 4 of 12 06_Ps130Full hope and in faith, and it will lift you up and give you the stamina to persevere.

0:16:51.8 SC: And so that is a beautiful principle for us through this Psalm, we need to be waiting, we wait on God, we don't get ahead of him, we don't rush ahead and we don't lag behind, we do exactly... Here's what I like to say, what's the last thing that God told you to do clearly? If you did that last thing and you're still in a period of waiting, then the time has not arrived yet for God to act. And so in that waiting period, we have this principle, we wait in submission to God's timing, and while we wait, we hope in His word, which means we're in his Word every day through the readings.

0:17:28.0 SC: So practice your love the word as you wait, because God will give you hope through his word, you will get a new word every day as you wait, and it will lift you up and give you stamina to persevere. And so you become a watchman. Ain't that beautiful? I love that. And the last two verses are, "O, Israel... " So he switches from just himself, the Psalmist, to all of Israel, "O Israel, hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is steadfast love and with him is plenteous redemption, and He will redeem Israel from all his iniquity." Remember that iniquity has the idea of crookedness or twistedness, so sin, and it's specific sin, the kind that twists what is good into what is bad, or it says what is bad is good, or what is dark is light, what is light is dark, so it's that twistedness. That's what the term iniquity implies there.

0:18:25.2 SC: And so Jesus forgives his people of their sins. And that's actually what his name means. When Mary and Joseph are told what to name Jesus, they say, "You will name him Jesus, for he will forgive his people of their sins." And so his name is that forgiveness and that redemption. And so these last two stanzas of this Psalm talk about this Messianic hope, and so as the psalmist waits, and he waits for the word, we know the word is Jesus Himself in His person, and so the word will come and he's a watchman, looking for that Messianic hope, and he calls all of Israel then to wait with Him and to hope in the Lord, and to hope in the Lord's love, and to hope in the Lord's word.

0:19:12.0 SC: And so, as all of the Psalms are, this is an individual who wrote a prayer that became a prayer of the entire community, and in this particular Psalm, it's a Psalm that they recited together in community as they ascended the hill to Jerusalem in the temple on pilgrimage for a feast day. And so we then can participate in that, we are drawn into this prayer of community because our church prays these prayers, these , particularly during Lent, as we are doing, but also throughout the year, and if you'll notice in the readings this is one of the Penitential psalms that has been offered in the readings throughout Lent, and so we all pray together in community as well as we ascend metaphorically to Easter, and we are descending at this point, we're descending into the passion, which is coming up in another week, and then we will ascend to the feast of the resurrection on Easter. Isn't that beautiful? I love that. So as I mentioned, this is the official prayer for the souls in purgatory, and so I want to talk about purgatory.

0:20:23.7 SC: This is actually an item or an idea that came up on the Facebook page where I asked for suggestions on what you wanted to study next, and someone mentioned purgatory, and I think... I thought that was actually interesting because I knew that this psalm was going to involve purgatory in a special way, and so I wanna talk about that. The word purgatory does not appear in the scriptures, and that's part of why our Protestant brothers and sisters deny the whole doctrine is because the word isn't in the bible, but here's a clue, neither is the word incarnation in the Bible, which they believe that, and neither is the word trinity in the Bible, and they believe that.

03/27/21 Page 5 of 12 06_Ps130Full

0:21:05.1 SC: Actually there's a collection of words, theology words that we use and dogmas that we hold to; the Trinity is one, The Incarnation is another, and Purgatory is another. These are ideas that the actual word that we use is not in the Bible, but the idea and the teaching certainly is. In fact, it is throughout the bible as I will show here in just a moment. But the word purgatory comes from the word purge. It's a cleansing. It's a purifying. And what I like to do is interchange that word purgatory when I'm speaking to a non-catholic with the word sanctification because they are very closely related words.

0:21:45.9 SC: And so when we talk about purgatory with a non-Catholic, we really need to use the word sanctification because that word is clearly in the Bible in any translation, but particularly in non-Catholic translations, and so we can say to them, you believe in sanctification right? And of course, they would say yes, because we understand that there cannot be the side of God, there cannot be union with God in Heaven, there cannot be an entrance into Heaven or the Kingdom of heaven, as the Bible so clearly says, without purity, no one can see God without holiness, the book of Hebrews says.

0:22:19.0 SC: Jesus talks about how we must be pure in order to see God. In fact, the pure in heart will see God, He says in the Sermon on the Mount, in chapter five. And throughout Matthew chapter five, in the Sermon on the Mount, He talks about these ideas of mortal and venial sin, and He uses the Ten Commandments as a framework through which to teach those ideas. "You've heard it said, you shall not murder," that's a commandment. But then he goes further to the venial sin, which actually I'm not sure I would argue that that's a venial sin, that you hate your brother or that you're angry... Murderously angry with your brother. That would also be considered a mortal sin, but you can see there that he is moving more deeply into the idea than just the simple commandment.

0:23:07.4 SC: He's moving more deeply into the heart and where the motivations are, right. So it's not just the fact that you don't kill your brother, it's also the fact that you harbor murderous anger toward him, and that is also sin, and I would argue even mortal sin, and I think that that's the whole principle that Jesus was presenting there in Matthew 5, but what we see then is this correlation between types of sin and degrees of sin, so sin is not just sin, and they're not all equal. More on that when we get back.

0:23:51.5 S3: You're listening to the Bible Study Evangelista show, bible study spinach that tastes like cake.

0:24:00.3 S2: Did you know you can get Bible study Evangelista radio notes and podcast delivered to your inbox every Monday morning? Redeem Your Mondays, join thousands of your fellow listeners by subscribing at Biblestudyevangelista.com. Now, here's Sonja.

0:24:34.0 SC: When we talk about purgatory, we really, I can't even say the word, we really need to differentiate between a couple of ideas; one is punishment, there are two types of punishment, eternal and temporal. The other idea we need to look at is the difference between mortal and venial sin, and then we have to really understand what purgatory is exactly. So that's sort of the framework through which we're going to explore this idea of purgatory.

0:25:03.0 SC: So beginning with punishment, I don't like that word, I've always hated it because of

03/27/21 Page 6 of 12 06_Ps130Full the way I grew up and punishment was in my family revenge, my father used punishment to get revenge on me when I did not do what he wanted me to do. And so punishment is not a good word. It wasn't a matter of discipline in my household, it was more a matter of, "I am gonna make you pay," and so I don't like that word.

0:25:35.0 SC: However, we must use the word, because the idea is, it's all over the catechism especially, but I want to just be careful when we talk about punishment and we're talking about God, he doesn't get revenge on us, right? Punishment is not a matter of making us pay, it's a matter of discipline, and God uses our suffering to discipline us, which is a whole different idea, we're learning. Discipline is a learning process, whereas punishment in my mind is revenge, and so God does not take revenge on us, he doesn't have to. His power is matchless, right, and this whole consequence for sin is built into the universe; you will incur consequences for sin, and if you don't allow God to purify you of sin through sanctification, through purgatory, then you will die in it, separated from God. And that is the idea.

0:26:37.0 SC: So there are two types of punishment, the Bible is very clear on this, there is eternal punishment, and there is earthly punishment. The word for earthly punishment that we see throughout the church is temporal, it means earthly. So there are two types of punishment, there's eternal punishment and temporal punishment. We see it right off the bat, in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve, God told them, "Do not eat of the trees of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life. Don't eat from those trees." And what do they do? They eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And they sinned, and God said, "If you do this, you will die." Now, they did not die immediately physically, but they did die spiritually, immediately, that was a mortal sin, that cut them off from the presence of God and the Spirit of God.

0:27:31.6 SC: We see that in the picture of God seeking them as he was accustomed to doing in the Garden of Eden in the afternoons, as he was used to walking with them in the evening, they had a communion with one another, and when he went to seek them after they had sinned, they hid, they were ashamed. And so there is a spiritual or earthly punishment. We see the difference in the two... If the eternal punishment was connected to the tree of life, and that is exactly why God did not allow them to eat of the tree of life after they sinned, because had He allowed them to eat of the tree of eternal life, they would have died in eternal death, they would have died in that mortal sin and would have... They would never have had the opportunity to be redeemed, and so he placed a cherubim, an angel, to guard the tree of life so that they could not eat of eternal life after they had fallen into sin. There is eternal punishment for sin, and that is the punishment that Jesus atones for in his life, death and resurrection. The eternal punishment is completely paid.

0:28:46.5 SC: The earthly punishment, however, is not. We see that in the example of Adam and Eve; there were curses involved in this punishment that God meted out to them, they would earn their bread through the sweat of their brow, child birth would from that point forward be brought forth in pain. So there were punishments that did not include a physical death at that time, however, physical death did eventually come, and so God did not lie to them when he said, "You will surely die," because they were never supposed to physically die, they died physically because they had first died spiritually.

0:29:33.2 SC: And so God then already in the promises there in the garden, he promised that One of Eve's descendants would strike at the head of the snake, and that basically means conquer, and so there was a promise of redemption right there, even in the very beginning of the Bible in the Garden

03/27/21 Page 7 of 12 06_Ps130Full of Eden. So we have this promise of redemption already there, but you can see the difference in the eternal punishment and the earthly punishment. We see it in Adam and Eve, we see it in Moses and Aaron. They did not trust God all the way to the Promised Land, and so they were not able to enter the promised land.

0:30:16.2 SC: And a lot of times, especially that story, but lots of stories where it seems that... For instance, when Uzza reached out to touch the ark, when it wobbled on the cart, the ox cart, and he died immediately, and David got very upset at God, when people read that they think that Uzza died and went to hell. But there's a difference in the earthly punishment and the eternal punishment, it's important that we keep this distinction clear in our minds. So Moses and Aaron were not allowed into the Promised Land, Moses particularly, but that doesn't mean that they went to hell, they were saints, right, and we see that on the Mount of Transfiguration when Jesus is speaking to Moses on that mount.

0:31:03.3 SC: So we know because Moses was one of the two greatest prophets in the Old Testament, there was an earthly punishment, but the eternal punishment was the hope in the Messiah. So in the Old Testament, the people looked forward to the Messiah, and they believed in him and his coming. And that was part of what we can say, "saved them," that was part of what made them saints. For us, we look back at the Messiah and His coming, and we believe in that, and so our faith, whether we're Old Testament or New Testament, our faith is in the Messiah of God, and yet ours is looking back in history and theirs was looking forward to the future, but our faith still is in the Messiah, all of us, we all believe in that atonement that came for them, it would come for us, it did come, but that earthly punishment then was taken on by this Messiah of whom the Psalmist speaks and looks toward.

0:32:08.7 SC: So our faith then is still centered on Christ, whether we're Old Testament or New Testament, it just depends on whether we're looking forward or backward, and of course, the faith of the disciples and the apostles in the time of Christ would have... It was required as well, right, and can you imagine, can you imagine trying to reconcile this human being in front of you as also being God, and so what faith... What faith it takes to see God himself working through the man, Christ, both God and man. So my point, then I digressed, we see in Adam and Eve, we see in Moses and Aaron, we also see in David, when he sinned with Bathsheba, we see that he was forgiven, and yet he still incurred earthly consequences, he still incurred earthly punishment, he was forgiven, and so his salvation then hinged on that forgiveness, His eternal salvation we'll say, and his hope in the Messiah and the messianic promises, but he still incurred earthly punishment.

0:33:19.1 SC: And so... I mean it's all throughout the Bible, but I'm just giving you three examples here of the two types of punishments, earthly and temporal. So when our non-Catholic brothers and sisters say that Purgatory implies that there's or even says that there's some sort of incomplete sacrifice or an incomplete redemption, or that Jesus didn't pay it all, or that Jesus' sacrifice wasn't enough, that's not the case. They're not seeing the distinction between the earthly consequences and the eternal consequences.

0:33:53.6 SC: Jesus paid all of the eternal consequences for sin, that's the part we couldn't pay. In order to atone for a single sin against an eternal God, an eternal sacrifice had to be made, and that's not something a creature can do, so we had to have some sort of mediation from God Himself, and we know that that comes through the man-God Jesus, who did pay all of our eternal punishment and our eternal consequences, he paid all of that for us because we couldn't.

03/27/21 Page 8 of 12 06_Ps130Full

0:34:33.3 SC: But we can do penance, and we can offer earthly penances in order to help assuage some of that earthly punishment that is due for sin, and remember that this punishment is discipline, it's not revenge, and so we're meant to be corrected through the consequences and the punishments that we undergo here on earth through the suffering that we incur from our sin, and that's built in... It's built in. The wages of sin is death, Paul says, so, even if it's not a literal physical death, you will incur a little death of some sort when you sin every time, there is always something that dies when sin is involved, we forfeit, right. We've looked at that throughout all of these Psalms, so I won't go into that, but it's important to know and understand the difference between eternal punishment and temporal punishment when we're talking about Purgatory.

0:35:52.6 S3: You're listening to the Bible Study Evangelista show, bible study spinach that tastes like cake.

0:36:00.2 S2: If you love having Bible study in your pocket, you can become a friend of the show. Click on the yellow friend of the show button on Biblestudyevangelista.com and become a supporter of any amount and any frequency. Now, here's Sonja.

0:36:36.2 SC: Another idea that we need to be looking at when we think of purgatory is a particular judgment, which is the personal one-on-one judgment that we will undergo at the moment of death, and then the final judgment, which is that collective sort of judgment in which it will be visible to all people who have ever lived, and that's the final judgment, and it will include actual nations as well. I don't have time to go into that because I wanna get to what is purgatory before the end of the show.

0:37:01.4 SC: So there is a particular judgment that is personal, and that is part of what purgatory involves. If we have not then allowed God to sufficiently purge us of our faults and sins while we're here on Earth through the suffering that we incur naturally through the consequences of our sin, then it must be finished after death, and that's an idea that it has been hailed by the church from the very beginning, this idea of complete sanctification and complete purification before we can see God. The Bible is full of it. The Jewish people believed it. We see it in Maccabees 12 in the prayers for the dead.

0:37:36.7 SC: Why would the Jewish people pray for their dead if they didn't understand and know that there was some sort of purification that occurs after death, if it's not been sufficiently complete during life, and it can be, and it really should be, the whole point in our suffering on Earth is to purify us of sinful inclinations and sinful habits. And so your suffering is not arbitrary, it's actually very individual to you and your particular predominant fault and your particular habits of sin.

0:38:03.0 SC: And so when we suffer, God intends to show us how to be purified, he expects us to cooperate with our suffering and lean into it, that's why when we resist the pain of it and we resist it by all of these spiritual and emotional wailings that we do, when we don't lean into it, it just extends it. It makes it longer. It makes it harder. It makes it more painful. We really need to lean into the sufferings that God allows in our lives and understand that He is purifying us of our habits of sin, venial, especially for most of us, probably, but also mortal sin. And there's a big difference. The Bible is also clear, and I talk about this through my study fulfilled, and I don't have time to really develop that idea, but there is mortal sin, 1 John 5, 16 through 17, lays that out clearly, there is sin that leads to death. There is sin that does not lead to death, he says it plainly.

03/27/21 Page 9 of 12 06_Ps130Full

0:39:02.8 SC: There is mortal sin and there is non-mortal sin, that's what the church calls mortal sin and venial sin. Mortal sin cuts you off from the grace of God, the life of God, it is a serious sin, a grave matter, done with full consent and full knowledge, that's the definition of a mortal sin. Venial sins are those sin habits that we fall into, and John himself is very clear that there is sin unto death, there is mortal sin. So the Jewish people believed in a type of purgatory without using that word, Jesus talked about it, or at least implied it in Matthew 5 and other places in his teachings, but the clearest place that we see it is in 1 Corinthians 3:15, and it's talking about this judgment, when we stand before God there will be fire involved in the purification of our works, everything that we do is in some way a work because we live in a body right now.

0:39:58.8 SC: And so our bodies are what we use to perform virtues and virtuous works or perform vice and works of vice or sin. And so in 1 Corinthians there in chapter 3, verse 15, we see that this fire will purify our works, but we ourselves will be saved, yet only through that fire. He says that so plainly, this fire then is the essence of purgatory. And that's why we say the fires of purgatory. So what is it exactly? Well, the fires of purgatory, you have to really go back to the Old Testament and understand what the fire is throughout the Bible.

0:40:42.1 SC: In Genesis 15, it is the presence of God in His covenant-making with Abraham. In Exodus, it's the burning bush, it's God Himself in the burning bush speaking to Moses. In Exodus 12, there is a fire that roasts the lamb of on the brazen altar in the tabernacle. In Exodus 13, there's a pillar of fire that leads the people of God through the Exodus and through the wilderness. In Exodus 19, there's a fire at the top of Mount Sinai, where God's presence is when Moses meets with God and there is the giving of the law. In Leviticus Chapter 6, and Chapters 6 and 9, there is an impure fire offered with incense by a couple of priests who ended up dying for it, so you see a judgment there involved.

0:41:29.8 SC: In Judges 6, there is the fire falls in acceptance of an offerings, in 1 Kings 8, the fire falls in acceptance of an offering, in Amos 5, there is a fire of judgment, in Malachi 3, there is a fire of purification, but in all of these ways, we see fire as the presence of God, we see fire as an acceptance of offering, and we see fire as judgment and purification in the scriptures. All of these fires though we find in the New Testament, are the presence of God himself.

0:42:00.7 SC: Hebrews 12:29 says that our God is a consuming fire. The fire of purgatory is the fire of God himself. That's why we see in Acts 2, when the Holy Spirit falls, there are tongues of fire over the apostles. That's why in 1 Peter chapter 4 and Chapter 1, he talks about fiery trials that purify us and keep us from sin. That's why we see in 1 Corinthians 3:15, that we are saved but as through fire, this fire is God Himself. It's true in the Old Testament, it's true in the New Testament. God himself is a consuming fire, the Bible says.

0:42:36.9 SC: And that's why Thomas Aquinas in his Summa, he is quoting Gregory of Nyssa, or yeah Pope Gregory when he says, that the fire of purgatory and the fire of hell are the same fire. So the fire of purgatory, the bliss of Heaven, or the beatitude, which is this light of God, the fire of heaven, or the bliss of heaven, the fire of purgatory and the fire of hell are all the same fire, Pope Gregory says. He says, "Even as in the same fire, gold glistens, and straw smokes, so in the same fire, the sinner burns and the elect is cleansed, therefore the fire of purgatory is the same as the fire of hell, and hence they are in the same place."

03/27/21 Page 10 of 12 06_Ps130Full

0:43:20.3 SC: And so when we talk about places, purgatory is not a place in the sense of matter and time, it's outside matter and time, because matter and time were created for us and when we no longer have our bodies, we are pure spirit and we... Our soul goes immediately to God's presence. Catherine of Genoa called the apostle of purgatory. She said in her treatise on purgatory, "Either in this life or in the life to come, the soul that seeks union with God must be purged by the fiery love of God, the holy souls are purged of all the rust and stains of sin, which they have not rid themselves in this life, the fire of purgatory is first of all, the fiery love of God."

0:44:00.6 SC: And Saint Faustina agrees, she says in her diary, "I asked these souls what their greatest suffering was, and they answered me in one voice that their greatest torment was longing for God." And so you know how that longing feels when you are suffering and you long to sense and feel the presence of God, and yet he feels absent, and it feels dark when you're suffering, but that is the purification of God Himself, you need to lean into that and sort of think to yourself that this darkness and this pain is God Himself.

0:44:35.0 SC: This darkness and pain that I am undergoing right now in whatever circumstance you find yourself, understand that that is the action of God's spirit on your soul, and that's why it's painful because we are sinful. We see this idea in the Song of Solomon where... In Chapter 8, which is the consummation of this whole love song, back and forth, song of love between God and the soul, he is called the flame of Yah, that's a poetic name for God himself. It is God Himself and His love that is allowing that pain and suffering and darkness in our lives according to John of the Cross and our doctors of prayer. It is God Himself, He is purifying us of the stains and the rust of sin, which Catherine of Genoa and Faustina talk about.

0:45:24.6 SC: And it's this ingrained, these patterns of sin, this predominant fault that we all have, mine was rage, and so I had to be purified, not only of the inclination or not only of the aggressive anger that I found myself acting out of, I call that vomit, but then also, I began to repress my anger and pretend I wasn't angry 'cause I didn't... I just thought that it was a matter of my action or my behavior, but really God was after something deeper, he was trying to cleanse me and purify me of this woundedness out of which my behavior came.

0:46:01.8 SC: And that is what purgatory does, when we have not allowed the suffering on Earth to purify us of these habits of sin, these terrible perceptions with which we see God and other people that come from our own woundedness, when we don't allow God to do that work in us, He is merciful enough to complete it at our death through what we call purgatory, and ultimately it is the final sanctification. The Bible talks about salvation in terms of past, present and future, we have been saved in Christ, we are being saved here on Earth, and we will be saved through purgatory when we stand before God's presence, but ultimately Purgatory is the presence of God.

0:46:45.3 SC: It's just painful because we have not yet been completely purified, and that's exactly why it's painful here on earth when we suffer, because we our wills are not quite one with God, and until they are, every suffering will be nothing... It will feel so painful and dark, but here's the thing, if you can understand, as John of the cross teaches that those sufferings and darknesses and pains are God Himself purifying your soul, if you can lean into that, then it becomes a bliss, it becomes a happiness to suffer because you realize that God is doing it out of mercy and out of love for you.

0:47:22.2 SC: And so lean into it, dear one, if you are in a time of suffering in purgatory, know that this Psalm is the official prayer for the souls in purgatory, pray for your own soul and offer your

03/27/21 Page 11 of 12 06_Ps130Full suffering for yourself and also those souls in purgatory. I'm Sonja Corbitt, the Bible study Evangelista.

0:47:50.8 Speaker 4: Thank you for listening to the Bible study Evangelista show. Find out more at Biblestudyevangelista.com.

03/27/21 Page 12 of 12